Aquarium diagnostic / WED 10-29-25 / Feminist sex educator Shere ___ / Dracula's preferred way to eat wings? / Beer brand on "The Simpsons" / Cold-weather cryptid / Mythical luster? / Fastener with an onomatopoeic name / Lake that's the "thumb" of New York's Finger Lakes

Constructor: John Donegan

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: Dracula puns — familiar phrases clued as if they were Dracula-related:

Theme answers:

• RIGHT OFF THE BAT (16A: Dracula's preferred way to eat wings?)
• LIGHT ON HIS FEET (26A: What makes Dracula frantically hop around?)
• UPON REFLECTION (47A: When Dracula doesn't feel seen?)
• RAISE THE STAKES (61A: Get ready to attack Dracula and his pals?)

Word of the Day: Shere HITE (43D: Feminist sex educator Shere ___) —

 

Shere Hite (/ʃɛər ˈhaɪt/ shair HYTE; November 2, 1942 – September 9, 2020) was an American-born German sex educator and feminist. Her sexological work focused primarily on female sexuality. Hite built upon biological studies of sex by Masters and Johnson and by Alfred Kinsey and was the author of The Hite Report: A Nationwide Study on Female Sexuality. She also referenced theoretical, political and psychological works associated with the feminist movement of the 1970s, such as Anne Koedt's essay "The Myth of the Vaginal Orgasm". She renounced her United States citizenship in 1995 to become German. (wikipedia)

• • •

Whoa, does Dracula actually eat bats? I thought he just turned into one, sometimes. Vampire cannibalism? That's rough. I missed that movie. I love that pun, but ... I'm not sure it's canon. Still, I generally thought this was a winning Halloween-week theme. If the NYTXW wanted to do a whole monster week leading up to Halloween, I would not mind. Outside the theme, though, this puzzle felt pretty Mondayish. Wednesdays are the one day of the week that seemed to actually be getting a little harder of late, but not today. There's nothing in here that a regular solver wouldn't know, and there's a lot of overfamiliar faces: ABIT ETA YETI OREO ETS IHOP INES ANTE IWIN ELIS AAA DEA, and then three names out of the Crosswordese Pantheon: ICE-T, GRU, and crossword double-threat Shere HITE—the one name that really did brought-out-of-mothballs—do people under 40 know who she is? She rose to fame in the '70s and became a staple of crosswords almost immediately thereafter, but her grid appearances have waned in this century. Here's my HITE report:

[xwordinfo dot com]

All of those HITEs are Sheres. As you can see, this is her first appearance in five years. It's been even longer for SHERE, which you also used to see a bunch, but while all HITEs are Sheres, not all SHEREs are Hites. There's one other crossword SHERE—SHERE Khan, the tiger in The Jungle Book. Both SHEREs seem equally dated now (The Jungle Book not being the dominant cultural reference point it once was). Here's the SHERE report:

All SHEREs are Khans before 1977. We've seen absolutely no SHEREs since 2019, and no SHERE Hite since 2016. The GRUs, however, just keep coming:

LOL what is that sad, lone red GRU back in 1973??? [Scottish particle: Var.]!?!?!?! I think I found the most self-parodic arcane crossword clue of all time. I wouldn't know what a "Scottish particle" was, let alone what a "Variant" looked like. Is it supposed to be a version of "grew?" No, it literally means "particle": "GRU, also grue. A particle, an atom, used both lit. and fig. Obs. in Eng. since 15th c." (Dictionary of the Scots Language). "Obs[olete]. in Eng. since 15th c."!? Again, LOL. Crosswords used to be wild.

[9D: Neighborhood in Warren Zevon's "Werewolves of London"]

Outside the themers, which involved a little piecing together, there were very few hesitations today. The PAGAN part of PAGAN GODS wasn't immediately clear to me (3D: Jupiter and Mars). "Planets" or "Roman gods" were my first thoughts. Parsing PH TEST took a little effort. I have never owned an aquarium and do not aspire to own an aquarium, so all "diagnostics" are unfamiliar to me, though PH TEST certainly makes sense (12D: Aquarium diagnostic). Despite teaching multiple works where Satan is a central figure (he's literally central in Inferno, and he's the dang protagonist of Paradise Lost), the word FALLEN did not exactly leap to mind (though it's accurate enough) (53A: Like Satan, in the Bible). I don't see any serious sticking points in the grid, though that's assuming the names (GRU SHERE SONNY etc.) are familiar to you. But all those names seem fairly crossed, so what you end up with is a lightly punny holiday treat, with nothing much to distract you from the wackiness of the puns. The fill might've been a little stale, but not such that it detracted from the overall solving experience that much. 

["... and Judd Nelson" !?]

[27D: "New Jack City" co-star, 1991]

Further:

• 35A: Food fight projectile (PEA) — in a food fight, everything is a "projectile." If you're taking time to load up individual PEAs on a spoon and flick them at people, one at a time, I guarantee you are losing.
• 66A: Rains hard? (HAILS) — the oldest misdirect clue. Methuselah wrote this clue. When he was like 8, he wrote it. If not this exact clue, then variations on it like [It comes down hard].
• 69A: Mythical luster? (SATYR) — the SATYR is notoriously lustful, so ... he's a luster. I never considered any other meaning of "luster." The "?" pretty much said "not the normal way you'd use that word." There's only one meaning of "Mythical," but "luster" ... that was obviously the pun word.
• 8D: Cold-weather cryptid (YETI) — presumably the YETI is a cryptid no matter the weather. [Cold-climate cryptid] might've been more accurate (and it's got bonus alliteration!)
• 10D: Knock back a few (IMBIBE) — a great word, as well as the title of David Wondrich's indispensable history of the cocktail.

• 29D: Fastener with an onomatopoeic name (SNAP)  — is "SNAP" the sound a snap makes? Is it named after the sound? It is defined by closing or locking with a "click" (merriam-webster dot com), so ... I guess the fastener's name is inherently sound-related. 
• 49D: Lake that's the "thumb" of New York's Finger Lakes (ONEIDA) — I live very near the Finger Lakes and yet couldn't name them all for you. I certainly didn't know ONEIDA was the "thumb." But I did know ONEIDA existed, and with the crosses I had in place, all I really needed from this clue was "Lake." Let's see ... Cayuga, Seneca, ONEIDA (apparently), Keuka ... errrrr ... dang, there's eleven of them!? How is one the "thumb," then? Shouldn't there be two thumbs? Who has 11 fingers? I have geographical as well as anatomical questions... Wait wait wait. ONEIDA isn't a Finger Lake at all!!!! It's just (allegedly) a "thumb" in relation to (???) the Finger Lakes. That clue is very confusing.

• 41D: Beer brand on "The Simpsons" (DUFF) — I am familiar with the works of Pablo Neruda ... I mean, I am familiar with this beer:

[my friend Andrew and me, many years ago]

See you next time.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook and Letterboxd]
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